XFX 7800GTX SLI Video Card Review :: Screenshots

The first game I wanted to try with the XFX 7800GTX was Half Life 2 with the new Transparency AntiAliasing mode. With TAA enabled, the image quality was the best of any video card I've seen to date. The interior of chain link fences show a lot of aliasing with normal AntiAliasing enabled. This is due to the fact that transparent textures aren't AntiAliased with normal Multisampling. With TSSAA enabled, transparent textures are AntiAliased, so a chain link fence will look smoother than without TSSAA. Playing HL2 on the 7800GTX I was able to play 1280x1024 with 4x TSSAA and 16x AF without problems.

Below are three pictures of what I am talking about. Pay particular attention to 2 things in the pictures: 1. The walkway pattern. Notice, how the grill in the third screenshot is regular, while on the first two the shots it looks like a mess. 2. Look at the interior of the back fence, especially the area intersected by a front fence. In picture 1 and picture 2, regular antialiasing is enabled and multisample transparent antialiasing is enabled. Notice how the fence looks like a big mess on the first two shots. The third shot the fence is cleaned up and can be noticeably a fence.

4x AA 8x AF no TRSSAA

4x AA 8x AF TRMSAA

4x AA 8x AF TRSSAA

Far Cry was released early last year from Crytek and one it is one of the most advanced games graphically that we have seen in a long time. Crytek has released patches (latest version is 1.32) enabling the game player to play the game with increased performance on Shader Model 3.0 hardware. I was able to play Far Cry at up to 1280x1024 maximum settings without slowdown on the 7800GTX from XFX. Enabling TSSAA I was amazed at the detail and image quality improvement found on the leaves was simply incredible.

Chronicles of Riddick, Escape From Butcher Bay was released last year and is based upon the movie The Chronicles of Riddick. In this game you are attempting to escape the prison at Butcher Bay. One nice thing about this game is it has several modes, SM0.5 for cards that don't support pixel and vertex shaders, SM1.1, for cards like the Geforce3 and 4, SM 2.0 for cards like the 9700 Pro and SM 2.0+ for GEFORCE6 and future hardware like the 7800GTX. The 7800GTX was able to play this game 1280x1024 4x AA 16x AF in TSSAA mode in SLI. Battlefield 2 is the sequel to EA Games' hit of 2003, Battlefield 1942. In this game you take control of a squad of soldiers to complete missions. Graphics in the game with the 7800GTX were simply incredible. With a single card, 1280x1024 4x TMSAA was fully usable. In SLI mode, 4X TSSAA was fully playable throughout, with frame rate never dropping below 30 fps.